Us + Peanut Butter = Not MFEO on this camping trip

Whoa, I'm getting a little wild here, posting more than once a month.

We went camping... Look how pretty it was.

 It was not in the cards for us to have peanut butter on our trip to Lake Somerville last weekend for Spring Break.  Had the dad did the shopping for the camping trip with assistant Aubrey, who helped make the menu.  The menu dictated that we eat pbj's for lunch.  I never complain because I love me some pbj sandwiches.  They did not buy peanut butter due to the fact that we have large amounts of it already at home (Because I love me some pbj sandwiches). On the way up to camping, Chad smacks his forehead and says, "Oh no!  I forgot the peanut butter!"  At least it wasn't the toothbrushes, right?  He also forgot the jelly, but we stopped in at the Chappell Hill country store and got some mayhaw jelly, which we've gotten there before and I highly recommend.  I'm not sure what a mayhaw is, really, but smashed up with sugar and pectin, whoa baby, that's good jam.  The store did not have peanut butter but luckily, the very last gas station in civilization had one little bottle for like $5.  I kind of cringed at that because I know you can get two huge ones at Costco for that.  But!  It was worth it because we were going to get our beloved pbjs.

The peanut butter stayed in the truck for the first day because there were no lunches to use it.  The second day, I made us all pbjs with the $5 peanut butter, which we enjoyed and then we went for a little walk.  We we came back, we were surprised to see little bits of yellow plastic all over the picnic table and the ground and this:

    Apparently we are not the only of God's creatures which enjoy peanut butter.  This has not happened to us camping in Texas, critters eating our food, and we hadn't thought to put it away. I'm not sure what critter is was though because we never really saw any woodland creatures except birds.  Squirrel?  They like nuts.  Racoon?  But it was in the day. ROUSes? I don't think they really exist.  In any case, I felt violated by Mother Nature.  The lid was destroyed and it didn't seem like anything had gotten to the peanut butter, but I wasn't taking any chances and that meant: No pbjs the third day.  We were going to have to have straight bread and mayhaw sandwiches.  Good, but a sad second place to the kind with peanut butter in it.  I wiped away a tear and threw it in our trash bag. A little later we left again, this time to see some friends who had arrived at the next camp over.  We hadn't been gone for too long when we came back and started to work on dinner.  We were surprised to notice the black trash bag had been gnawed open, the peanut butter jar discovered and gnawed on some more. This time the critter had eaten more of the lid, decided to try the peanut butter, eaten some of that, and left.  Whatever critter it was, it was persistent.  I kinda wanted to leave it out then, you know, if whatever it was wanted it that bad... I have no idea how it got into the trash bag, because it was suspended from the lantern pole in our campsite.  I don't know whether it was dumb- it ate the lid but not the peanut butter the first time, or smart- it somehow jumped? stood up? clawed? at the trash bag to get it open, and hung on to the trash bag while it ate.  But I didn't leave it out because I didn't know what critter it was and I didn't want it inviting its fifty best friends into our campsite for a peanut butter party. So, I think it was not meant to be for us to eat peanut butter.  First we left it at home, then had to buy a tiny jar for $5, then it got eaten by wild animals.      

Speaking of wild animals, we had some monkeys.  (I especially like Yoshi who is also hanging from the tree branch)

Also we shared our campsite with some leaf  cutter ants. 

 This is what Andrew did while we were camping:

 This is what Aubrey did:

 This is what Winnie and I did:

Chad came too, he was a big part of our trip, but somehow there are not any pictures of him.  He was there though.

And everybody waded in the lake.  Winnie got a little overzealous and knocked Andrew into the lake.  This picture makes me laugh... while Andrew is whimpering about being cold and wet (and who wouldn't in jeans) Winnie looks like she is rolling around laughing in the background.  Oh, Winnie.)

On the way home we passed Brenham and so, we had ourselves a Bluebell Country Day. You can't beat $1 scoops of ice cream. 

So, it was a pretty good camping trip, even without the peanut butter.